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is there a search engine for the fediverse?
(leminal.space)
Thank you!
The built-in search function works quite well I would say
The fediverse has a built-in search engine?
I can only comment on my experience searching for communities in lemmy and people to follow on mastadon, but in both cases I am not sure I'd say "works quite well" would describe my experience.
But also that's not what I think OP was talking about.
They want a search engine for a random fact like google. It's been long true that you need to add "reddit" to the end of any google search to find the info you needed.
It'd be nice to have a fediverse alternative.
I can only comment on my experience searching for communities in lemmy and people to follow on mastadon, but in both cases I am not sure I’d say “works quite well” would describe my experience.
For communities, https://lemmyverse.net/communities is probably better.
I use the built-in search engine for posts, and usually the results are relevant and accurate
Oh, the single, shared built-in search function in mastodon, pixelfed, misskey, lemmy, friendica, peertube, diaspora, castopod, writefreely, &c?
Please, the fediverse is more than [platform you're currently using].
The built-in search function works quite well I would say
The UX is a bit funky, but the results are good.
The disclaimer at the end of your comment doesn't render properly. At least, on Thunder
Lemmy search works pretty well on larger servers, and they're indexed by major web search engines.
The microblog side of things is worse, with Mastodon long having near-useless search because it might "encourage negative social dynamics" or some such. Some other software, such as Akkoma has had better search, and Mastodon has recently improved somewhat for accounts that opt into being searchable. Mastodon directs search engines not to index most pages.
Some people get very upset about attempts to build general-purpose fediverse search tools.
At times the mastodon people sound like Alex Jones, only it's "techbros" instead of "globalists"
I think it's a small, but very loud minority who have unrealistic expectations about how other people will use data they share in a manner that's inherently rather public. I kind of see where they're coming from, but ActivityPub with open federation doesn't work that way.
I agree. I also notice a constant push to ban anything that is deemed offensive, which in most cases is just a statement of opinion that someone did not like.
What do you mean by “kind of see where they’re coming from”?
There are two general areas:
- The history of the internet is full of examples of companies taking data about or creative output from people and trying to make money from it without permission, in ways the original creator might not like. Nobody has gone there with a Fediverse scraper or search project that we know of yet, but it's going to happen if the Fediverse gets big enough.
- Some people want to be able to easily share things with a certain audience without them being easily discoverable by a different audience. There are of course privacy settings to control visibility and software like Matrix that provides not only access control by cryptographic security, but those add friction. It's only possible for this group to have it both ways if nobody develops good search tools, which turns some of them into bullies.
Kagi has a "Fediverse Forums" lens.
There's also sepiasearch.org for PeerTube videos.
There are various websites that catalog all the instances they can find, but I can't remember the one I used back in the day an don't know if they search communities too or just instances
Also Kagi has a fediverse lens
Your favourite search engine + "site:your-instance.net" should do okay hopefully?
The point is to search the whole fediverse, not just one instance.
this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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